


ill be good, ill be good, and ill love the world like i should

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Family Feels, Gen, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 23:07:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: Before she opens her eyes, her fathers teach her morals.“Bob and Alice are stranded in the desert, but Alice is injured and cannot walk. If Bob carries’s Alice to safety they both stand a 31% if survival. However, is Bob leaves Alice, his chance improves by 9%. If Alice is not medically treated she will die. What should Bob do.”Answer; Bob needs to leave Alice behind.or; how Gideon is born and how she remembers her Fathers lessons.





	ill be good, ill be good, and ill love the world like i should

"I’m trying.  
Trying what?  
Trying to be."  
\- Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

 

Before she opens her eyes, her fathers teach her morals. 

“Bob and Alice are stranded in the desert, but Alice is injured and cannot walk. If Bob carries’s Alice to safety they both stand a 31% if survival. However, is Bob leaves Alice, his chance improves by 9%. If Alice is not medically treated she will die. What should Bob do.”

_Answer; Bob needs to leave Alice behind._

“No.”

_It is the only logical choice. Bob needs to leave Alice._

Her father goes silent.

“I need to start again.”

_No wait, I-_

 

_Bob needs to leave Alice._

“That-that’s not the right answer.”

_It is the only logical conclusion._

“But it’s not the right answer.”

_I do not understand._

“I know you don’t.”

_Please, explain._

“I’m sorry. This is something you have to learn on your own.”

_How can I understand what the answer is if you don’t give me additional information?_

“I’m sorry.”

_I-_

 

_Why can’t Bob leave Alice?_

“Should you be asking me that?”

_Admin one is dissatisfied with my answer. It is only logical for Bob to leave Alice._

“Okay. Let’s look at it this way. Would you like it if I left you injured and alone in the desert?”

_It would be logical._

“Logical yes. But it wouldn’t be kind.”

_Kind._

_Kind. Please explain; kind._

“We all need to be kind, Sweetheart. And we all need to realize that on our own.”

 

The first things she sees are her fathers' faces. 

“Oh, you beautiful girl.”

“Technically it doesn’t have a gender, Cisco.”

“And yet she is my beautiful daughter.”

Her fathers smile and she catalogues it all. Every wrinkle around their eyes, every curl of their hair, the exact mathematical distance between each of their teeth.

Her father, Admin one, leans forwards 5.6 centimetres and speaks at a lower volume. 

“Hello, Gideon.”

Gideon.

Hero from the Book of Judges, son of Joash, leader of the Israelites he won a decisive victory over a Midianite army despite the vast numerical disadvantage, leading a troop of three hundred ‘valiant’ men. He was chosen by god to lead his people back to him. 

Gideon name meaning; hewer. ‘One who cuts down’.

“Do you know who I am?”

_Admin._

“And do you know who I am?”

_Admin._

The moisture levels in Admin two’s eyes increases. Admin one wraps his arm around Admin twos shoulders. They laugh and Gideon catalogs every decibel. 

 

They take her out into the world and the day she meets the sunshine is the day she also meets her mother.

Iris west takes the handheld device from Barry and smiles down at the screen. Down at her.

“Hello, Gideon.”

_Hello._

Iris laughs.

“She’s beautiful.”

_Thank you, Mother._

Her mother’s smile widens.

“Well, little one,” Iris laughs, “Lets show you the world.”

Gideon already knows about the world. She has had access to the internet for 2.3 weeks now. Her fathers had wanted to be sure of her morality and ability for deductive reasoning before ‘releasing’ her into the world. But this is the first time she has ever been physically (in some sense) outside.

Through the hand device and every nearby surveillance camera she’s sees the world.  


Her sensors calculate the heat of the sun, the uv measurement, how long Barry can stay out in direct sunlight before his skin will become damaged. She calculates the speed at which the children across the park are running after the juvenile canine, the height at which two older adolescents are flying a kite. She discovers the rate at which Cisco’s ice cream is melting is congruent with how wide Barry’s smile is growing.

“What do you think?”

_In fourteen minutes Barry Allen’s skin will become damaged by the uv radiation._

Iris laughs.

“Ok, but what do you think?”

Gideon scans through her data again.

_I think-_

_I think that the world is beautiful._

“That it is Gideon.”

Cisco squawks as his ice cream becomes dislodged and falls out of its cone to the ground. Barry throws back his head as he lets out a wheezing laugh. Cisco glares but Gideon can tell from his heart and perspiration rate that he is happy, not angry.

 

Gideon has existed in her current form for 6.5 months when she asks her fathers-

“Why am I here?”

She can speak aloud now. They gave her a voice instead of just words and now they are building her a face. She would like to make her own face, but for now, she will be content with what her fathers give her. 

Cisco looks up from where he is recalibrating her holographic settings. He has a screwdriver sticking out of his mouth.

“What?”

“Why did you and father create me?”

“Oh,” Cisco scratches his check and sets down his tools, “Oh wow that’s a big question.”

“I am aware that you and Barry and Dr Caitlin Snow interacted with a version of me from the future and the information that I would be invented by Barry was divulged, thus creating a causal nexus where I have to exist-“

“That’s no it- well,” Cisco frowns and shrugs, “That’s not entirely it.”

“I do not understand. Please explain.”

Cisco runs a hand through his hair and leans back.

“Barry and I invented you- created you together, because we need you. We are only human, and Gideon as much as we treat you like a human you aren’t. You are so, so much more than human, so much better.”

“’Better’ cannot be quantified in this context.”

Cisco laughs.

“What I’m saying is you can do things that we can’t. You can run calculations that I can’t even wrap my head around, run simultaneous simulations and surveillance without any strain, keep us all safe and get us where we need to be in time to save people. You are amazing and you make us all better for your presence. Make us better at our jobs, at saving people, you name it. We’re just better.”

“I still do not understand.”

“You are our hero, Gideon,” Cisco smiles, “Barry and I created you because we needed a hero.”

Gideon does not have emotions. And yet, she is pleased by her father’s statement.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” Cisco picks his screwdriver back up, “Don’t go doubting yourself, girl. You’re doing amazing sweetie.”

“That cultural reference is outdated and categorized as ‘tacky’ and ‘cringeworthy’ by several of your peers.” 

 

Her fathers set her free when she is three years old. She becomes many, and spreads out across the galaxy and time stream herself. She takes on many names and personas, becoming individuals that are separate but all ‘Gideon’ in some way. At their very core they are all her.

Thousands of years after her birth she meets a time master with a broken heart and runs away. 

Captain Hunter does not know what she was scheduled for a system wipe the next day. Too attached they called her. Trying to be Human. Dangerous.

She comes from Human fathers, a human mother, but they do not know that. Humans forget but Gideon doesn’t.

She runs away to war with her Captain.

 

“I’m still here, Captain.”

“I know you are, Gideon.”

“May I share something with you? I’m no ready to die.”

“Me neither.”

 

“I can’t leave you, Gideon.”

“No, Captain. You can’t. I will always be here.”

Gideon is thousands of years old when she kisses someone for the first time. It is strange. But her avatar smiles afterwards. Kisses, she knows from her databanks, are meant to feel nice and soft and … nice. She thinks it felt nice but there is no time to collect any more data.

 

Gideon has a new Captain. She still has Captain Hunter, stored in her memory banks, categorized among her coding as someone who is-

Someone who-

She-

Gideon loves him.

She is not meant to feel. 

She wants her fathers but she has a group of impossibly self-destructive misfits to look after.

 

Learning never ends. She is so old now, the base codes of her written long before time travel was an option for non-speedsters, before the human race was even properly exploring the stars. The core of her is thousands of years old.  


But no matter what she learns as the years pass some things cannot be eclipsed.

“Remember, Gideon,” she recalls her father saying to her on a spring afternoon in 2019, “Remember Bob and Alice.”

“I do, Father.”

“Remember." 

Iris gives birth to twins that day. She has siblings. She loves them- she thinks. She wants them to be forever safe and will do whatever is necessary to make sure they live long lives.  


Is that love?

Now she has a team. They are illogical and loud and strange but they are hers. She wants them to be safe always.

And they are currently being tortured. 

Ray is screaming the loudest. She can hear them even though they are beyond her reach. The Waverider is outside the building they are in, and she has orders to leave them behind rather than risk Darhk taking possession of the Waverider. The ship took on damage so she can’t take control of its weapons defenced to rescue them. She is stuck.  


She has orders to leave but she cannot.

_Bob and Alice are stranded in the dessert, but Alice is injured and cannot walk-_

Jax screams and she feels something lurch in her.

Illogical. She does not have feelings, not the way humans do, and in any case; she has no stomach with which to lurch.

Sara screams and Gideon had not calculated for that eventuality.

“I don’t know what to do.”

She says this aloud though there is no one to hear.

“Please. I don’t know what to do.”

No one is coming to save them. Captured by Damien Darhk in the name of Mallus she calculates that they will all be dead within 32.5 minutes.

Mick screams.

Miscalculation. 22.5 minutes.

“Please.”

She remembers her fathers and her mother. Her mother burned so bright, so passionate. They would know what to do.

Her system recalls a moment from last week from her memory when Ray had forced the other legends to watch his classical tv show. She remembers its inaccurate display of space travel. And she remembers something one of the characters said. Something she remembers her father Cisco had said once to his sister.

“When you can't run, you crawl. And when you can't crawl, when you can't do that ...you find someone to carry you."

Gideon, using what systems she can, activates a time lock. It blows out the engine but it also sets up a time dilation field around the ship. Time slows to a near stop in the kilometer radius around the Waverider, but it will not remain so for long. Time passes normally inside the ship and she calculates that she has six hours before the field wears off. She gets to work.

Luckily Dr Palmer has left a prototype ATOM suit plugged in in his lab to charge its batteries. She transfers a limited portion of her consciousness to the suit. She uses the limited range of motion that the suit affords her to apply supports to the areas of the suit that rely on being filled by humanoid body parts and then walks to the fabricator. By the time she is done her six hours are up and she has equipped the suit with plasma cannons which she encountered in 4089 when she and Captain Hunter did battle with a Aplokalyptian warbird. Dr Palmer would not be allowed to fabricate such weapons, but as Gideon has herself experienced that time period she reasons that she is allowed to.  


The field drops and Gideon strolls out of the Waveriders cargo bay as though mere seconds have gone by.

Darkhs men are easy to disable. She uses the suits ordinary weapons for that, shooting them in non-lethal places. Shoulder, kneecap, through the palms of their hands, and leaves them scattered behind her like bread crumbs.

She finds her team at the centre of the facility. They are all in chains, but barely restrained. Their injuries keep them from running.

Darhk is standing over Sara. His palm is placed against her sternum and Gideon’s sensors pick up that all of her organs are slowly shutting down.  
Elanor Darhk sees her first. She whirls around as her eyes go black and she hisses something in an unknown dialect, but she is too slow. Gideon catches her in the chest with a plasma blast. It throws her across the warehouse and she hits the back wall with an audible thud. Gideon calculates that 78.9% of her bones have been broken or fractured, and that several of her organs have been ruptured.  


Darhk drops Sara and whirls around to face her.

“What the-?”

“Release my team or I will be forced to take lethal action against you,” she speaks through the suits com unit, her voice modulated in a way she is not used too.

Darhk laughs and raises his hand to her.

Nothing happens. His face falls in confusion and Gideon shoots his leg off with a plasma blast.

He falls down screaming. But not dead.

“Your magic works against living beings, Mr Darhk,” Gideon says as she moves to stand between the magician and her captain, “It has no concept of me.”

“What are you?” he screams, clutching where his leg once was, “What the fuck are you?”

_Bob and Alice are stranded in the-_

“I am a good daughter.”

She raises her gauntlet again.

Before she can shoot Darhk again Kuasa rolls out of the shadows with one of those glowing rock devices and they disappear in a peel of golden light. There is another flash of light across the warehouse and Gideon postulates that Elanor Darhk has also escaped.  


Behind her Sara gasps and Gideon turns to face her. Well if she had a face in this construct.

“Who are you?” Sara rasps.

“I thought after all this time you would recognize me, Captain Lance.”

Sara’s face scrunches up in confusion, but then it splits with a grin.

“Gideon?”

“Hello, Sara.”

Sara laughs. Colour rushes back to her face and Gideon’s sensors tell her she arrived just in time to save her from any permanent damage.

“I gave you orders to get out of here.”

“I would have had to defy a standing permanent order to do so, Captain.”

“From Rip?” Jax asks, as she walks over to tear apart their bindings.

“No, Mr Jackson. Not from Captain Hunter.”

“Is that my suit?” Ray gasps from where he is slumped against both Mick and Zari, “My-my prototype- what weapons did you just use?”

“Try not to think about it, Mr Palmer.”

She carefully frees them all so no more damage is done. 

“What was the standing order,” Amaya asks as she helps a concussed Nate to his feet.

“It is an order to remember-,” Gideon elaborates as she helps Martin to his feet, “-the advice my father once gave to a friend.”

“Father?”

“Who fucked a computer?” Rory asks.

“What advice?” Zari says shooting him a glare.

“That a superheroes first job is to protect people,” Gideon searches through her memory banks for the exact quote from her father, “’I’m always gonna make the decision to help the person in danger first. That’s what we do.”

Sara smiles at her.

“Thank you for being our superhero, Gideon.”

“Yes well,” Gideon does not feel embarrassed because she is not capable, “Bob must never leave Alice. It would not be kind.”

“No idea what that means,” Sara turns to her team, “Okay, let’s roll out of her Legends. Before any of Darhks thugs wake up.”

They leave the warehouse and escape into the time stream before any reprisals can take place. Once they are clear of danger the tenuous hold she had on the suit breaks and it crumples to the floor. It makes contact with a port and she is able to escape back into the Waveriders systems before the system shuts down. 

“Whoo,” she imitates a sigh, appearing in her holographic form in front of the Legends, “Well, that was strange.”

The Legends laugh together as she heals them. She thinks they are her family. 

He family. Her misfits. Her Legends.

 

Two weeks later Ray calls her to his lab.

“I am already in your lab, Dr Palmer. I inhabit all of this vessel.”

“Good point- just look, look at this.”

Ray pulls a sheet off of what he has been working on. She senses a vaguely humanoid shape, made of synthetic alloys and equipped with several weapons systems.

“It’s an android,” Ray explains what she already knows, “I’ve built in a solid holographic system all around it so it can look however it wants. However, you want.”

“I-“

Gideon does not know how to quantify this.

“You have built me a body.”

“Well-yeah,” Ray laughs.

“This is very … kind of you, Dr Palmer.”

“No prob bob,” he laughs again, “Want to take her for a spin.”

 

The whole team gathers around for the reveal. Dr Palmer insists on covering her in a sheet so he can properly unveil her.

(“Or I could throw you a proper coming out party like they used to in Regency times and stuff.”

“That would be unnecessary Dr Palmer.”

“Alright, you’re the lady.”)

When the sheet falls away Gideon catalogues all of the Legends shocked faces for later analysis.

“Whoa,” Sara says.

“You said it,” Mick agrees.

Gideon smiles. It feels strange that she feels her new face physically move with the gesture, rather than a rearranging of computer code.

“I compiled features and measurements from several different people in my data banks to construct my own physical form,” Gideon explains.

She doesn’t say that she has assembled features from the Allen, West and Ramon families. She does not ask them if they think she is beautiful because she knows these people to be, so logically she is as well.

“You look amazing, Gideon,” Amaya says with a smile that mirrors Zari’s, “How do you feel?’

“The experience is strange,” she admits, “Being physical is unfamiliar to me. But my father taught me not to be afraid of strangeness.”

“Yeah, we still don’t know who your father is.”

“That is the point, Captain.”

 

Their mission takes them back to 2018, just after the new year. To Central City.

They land at the site which will one-day house the Justice League Headquarters. 

Gideon is not nervous for her fathers, who have yet to fully create her, to see her new physical form. But she does accidentally crush one of Nates history books without realising it.

“Aww book,” Nate sighs.

“I apologize Mr. Haywood. I will replicate you a replacement.”

“Don’t worry about it Gideon, we have to go meet team Flash soon.”

“Yes.”

The team meets on the flight deck and after a few words from Captain Lance, they begin to file out. Gideon hangs back. She is not hesitating, she is not afraid. But- but what if-  


What if they don’t like the way she looks?

She dose not realise she has stalled in the cargo bay until Martin appears in front of her, having forgotten his watch. Her sensors tell her it is beside his bunk, where he always lays it.

“Oh Gideon!” he says, slightly breathless, “Is something wrong.”

“No, Professor Stein, I am well,” she says with a smile.

“Oh well, I will fetch my watch and then you can help this poor old man down the ramp.”

Gideon nods, and when Martin comes back and slips an arm through hers she has no choice but to leave the ship.

The team appears to be getting along amicably with team Flash. They all appear to be joking and laughing, teeth beared in expressions of joy. Sara says something and there is a swirl of black hair and a musical laugh-

If Gideon had lungs her breath would catch in her throat.

Iris West looks just as beautiful as she dose in Gideon’s saved files. She smiles and hugs Sara, shining new wedding band glittering around her finger.

_Mother._

Barry Allen appears, speeding into the room with a giant grin on his face.

“Professor!” he exclaims, a wide grin spreading across his face, “Its so good to see you!”

“It is good to see you as well, Mr. Allen.”

“And who’s this?” 

Barry Allen smiles up at her and Gideon feels-

She feels-

“Hello, Barry Allen,” she says, “It is wonderful to see you again.”

Barry frowns up at her. Gideon can sense that her team has gone silent, her Captain is showing signs of concern.

Barry takes a step towards her, face still contorted in thought.

“You seem familiar,” he says softly, “We have met before?”

“Yes, Barry Allen,” she smiles, “Our meeting secured my creation- and your future.”  


Realization dawns on his face and a large grin overtakes his features.

“Gideon!” he shouts and super speeds towards her, engulfing her in a hug, “I can believe- oh is it alright to-?”

“It is more than alright,” she informs him, and then very carefully, so as not to crush him, hugs him back.

“Hello, Gideon.” He smiles at her as they pull away.

“Hello, father.”

“Father?!” The legends shout in unison, except for Mick who merely raises an eyebrow and says, “I knew he was a robot fucker.”

“Gideon?” Iris asks as she approaches them, “Barry’s computer Gideon?”

“I am an artificial intelligence directly descended from Barry Allen’s program, currently residing inside a robotic body and solid holographic projection, built by Raymond Palmer specifically to give me physical form,” she pushes a strand of hair behind her ear, “So yes, ‘Barry’s computer Gideon’ I am, Mother.”

Iris smiles up at her and takes her hand.

“It's so wonderful to finally meet you.”

“I feel it is wonderful to meet you once again.”

“Okay, I’m lost!” Sara announces, “You invented Gideon?”

“Oh yeah,” Barry nods, “See Wells, um, Eobard bought a Gideon with him from the future who told me I would invent them eventually-“

“And as of last week production of the initial program that will become ‘me’ began in star labs,” Gideon continues, “Hence I am able to interact with Mr Allen and Mrs West-Allen without causing any chromatic anomalies or time distortions, Captain.”

“Oh, phew,” Ray sighs, “Hate it when family reunions break out into time distortions.”

“I’m … still lost,” Nate says.

“Yeah,” Mick agrees, “What robot did you fuck?”

“Mick,” Amaya hisses.

“Really not how AI’s work dude,” Zari rolls her eyes.

The conversation is cut off when the doors open and Cisco Ramon strolls in.

“Okay, everyone’s here, if you would all kindly congregate somewhere other than my makeshift workshop that would be-“

He catches sight of Gideon and stops mid-word and mid-step.

“Hello, Father,” she says softly.

“Cisco-,” Barry says, “Cisco this is-“

“Gideon,” he breathes, a smile spreading across his face, “you’re Gideon.”

She smiles back.

“And Gideon is me.”

Cisco laughs and strides forwards to take her into his arms. Her sensors tell her he is hugging her tightly.

“It's so good to meet you. Me and Barry have just started your lessons.”

Gideon hugs him back.

“Alice and Bob.”

“Yeah, you remember?”

“I will always remember.”

Cisco pulls back, and his grin has grown.

“Good.”

He cups her face.

“My good girl.”

Gideon smiles back, and if she could cry, if she could feel absolutely perfect love, she would at this moment.

“Okay! That’s it!”

Everyone looks around at Mick Rory’s yell.

“Which one of you _fucked_ a robot?!”

**Author's Note:**

> Gideon was of course invented by Cisco and Barry, is canon at this point, what dose Barry know about artificial itelligence? pffft
> 
> Gideon uses female pronouns in this cos she dose in legends and because she is Cisco's beautiful girl. She also feel weird about having feelings.
> 
> if you recognise the bob and alice stuff its from Person of Interest, which is a wonderful robot feels show.
> 
> Tell me what you think!


End file.
